P. Chisholm - A Season of Knives

‘Yes, yer honour.’

‘Did you kill Mr James Atkinson?’

‘No, yer honour. I didn’t.’

‘Why does such an important gentleman as Sir Richard Lowther think you did?’

‘I dunno, yer honour. Only I didn’t.’

‘Where were you on Monday night?’

Barnabus’s eyes darted from side to side making him look even shiftier.

‘Well, see, yer honour, I was at Bessie’s first, because my master was out wiv a patrol. Then I…I went to a house I know. Perhaps one of the girls lifted my knife while I was there. I never went nowhere near Frank’s vennel.’ Barnabus paused and then smiled slyly. ‘’Course it’s funny in a way and serves me right,’ he volunteered, while Carey winced inwardly. ‘I’ve been teaching the girls to do tricks with dice and such, and I expect one of them used ‘er lessons on me.’

Half of the people in the marketplace knew exactly where Barnabus had been on Monday night. The other half learnt it from them within a few seconds. They hissed and muttered at each other at the news that Madam Hetherington’s girls had been taking lessons in cheating at dice. Carey fought not to laugh. That would teach Madam Hetherington not to betray her customers.

‘Do you mean you were committing the sin of fornication on Monday night?’ interrupted Scrope pompously.

Barnabus didn’t look at him and nor did Carey. ‘Yes, my lord,’ said Barnabus, turning pointedly to the Coroner. ‘I wouldn’t say, if I wasn’t on my Bible oath, yer honour, but I was. I’m a poor sinner, yer honour, and if I’m sentenced to do penance for the fornication, well, I can’t gainsay as I deserve it, but I never murdered Mr Atkinson and that’s a fact. I don’t deserve to swing for a murder I never did, yer honour.’

Lowther leaned over from his place on the other side of the cross.

‘Ye’re a footpad, and that’s a fact,’ he snarled.

‘Sir Richard!’ snapped Aglionby.

‘Well yer honour, ‘e’s right and ‘e isn’t, if you follow. It’s true I was a footpad down in London, but since Sir Robert Carey took me on as ‘is servant, I’ve left my evil ways behind, sir.’

More or less, thought Carey, smiling inwardly at the strained piety on Barnabus’s face.

‘Apart from passing on what small skills I have to Madam Hetherington’s girls,’ he added reflectively, making sure the audience got the point. ‘Anyway, no footpad would make the mistake of cutting someone’s froat, yer honour.’

Aglionby raised his heavy grey brows.

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Specially me, because I’m too short. I’m about four inches shorter than Mr Atkinson, yer honour. If I’d wanted ‘im dead, which I didn’t, I’d have stabbed ‘im in the back. In the kidneys. S’much safer and less messy.’

Carey risked a glance over his shoulder to see how the people in the marketplace were taking this. A lot of them were nodding wisely. Even one or two of the jury were nodding. Barnabus, thought Carey, you don’t need me at all, do you?

‘Yes,’ said Aglionby, impressively straightfaced. ‘Thank you, Cooke.’

Barnabus stepped back among the other suspects and looked modestly at the cobbles.

Somewhere on the other side of the marketplace, Lady Scrope had arrived with the litter transporting Julia Coldale, who was helped down from it. Carey waited for the stir to die down a little, then nodded at Richard Bell to call the next witness.

That was Mrs Katherine Atkinson. She was shaking and as white as her apron. Compared with the other women watching, tricked out to the nines in their best clothes, she was a doleful hen sparrow, her blue working kirtle and her apron showing the signs of her imprisonment. She wasn’t manacled; Carey assumed Dodd had quietly forgotten Scrope’s order to chain her.

She swore her oath in a voice that was almost too soft to hear. Edward Aglionby stared at her solemnly and then said, ‘Well, Mrs Atkinson, tell us how you killed your husband?’

There was a muttering from the people. Mrs Atkinson gripped her hands tight together, looked straight up at him and said clearly, ‘I didna.’

This time there was a distinct gasp. Carey instinctively swivelled his head round to look at his sister’s face and found her very pleased with herself.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Scrope.

‘I didna kill my husband, my lord.’

‘But…but you confessed to it. Yesterday. You stood in front of me and you said you did it.’

Scrope was leaning forward, half-standing, forgetting himself in his outrage. Mr Aglionby had been very patient with him but now leaned towards him and whispered something sharp in his ear. Scrope coughed and sat down again. Carey was starting to like Mr Aglionby.

‘Please, Mrs Atkinson,’ the Coroner was saying to her. ‘Address yourself to the Court.’

‘Ay sir,’ said Mrs Atkinson, quailing at his annoyance. ‘My lord, I did say so. I’m very sorry. But I wasna on my Bible oath then, and I dare not put my soul at risk wi’ perjury.’

‘What’s your story now?’

‘’Tisn’t a story, your honour,’ said Mrs Atkinson, two hot spots of colour starting in her cheeks. ‘I lied to my lord Warden before, because I’m a poor weak-willed woman and I was frightened. But I’ve had time to think and pray to God and what I’m saying now is God’s own truth, your honour.’

Scrope sniffed eloquently but said nothing.

With the Coroner pumping her with questions, Kate Atkinson told the tale in a stronger voice now Scrope had made her angry. She told the sequence of the morning’s events, how she had left her husband sleeping in the dark before dawn and gone down to milk the cow and how Julia had come and finally brought herself to the moment when she took a tray up to her husband and found him dead in his bed.

‘Your honour,’ said Carey, stepping forward again. ‘May I?’

‘Yes, Sir Robert.’

‘Mrs Atkinson, what did the bedroom look like?’

‘Och, it was terrible, sir. It was all covered wi’ blood, like a butcher’s shambles. It was on the sheets and the blankets and the hangings and the rushes…It made me stomach turn to see.’

‘And your husband?’

‘He was lying on the bed…with…with…’

‘With his throat slit.’

She swallowed hard. Her knuckles were like ivory. ‘Ay sir,’ she said.

‘Tell me, when you got up that morning, did you open the shutters?’

She frowned at this sudden swoop away from the awful sight of her husband’s corpse. ‘I didna,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t usually; Mr Atkinson likes to sleep a little longer and it would wake him.’

‘Did you open them on this day?’

‘Nay sir, I didna.’

‘When you came up to see your husband dead, how did you see him. Was there a candle lit in the room?’

‘Nay, sir, it had burned down. I saw by the daylight…Oh.’

‘Were the shutters open by that time, then, Mrs Atkinson?’

She nodded at him. ‘Ay,’ she said in a surprised tone of voice. ‘Ay, they were, and swinging free, what’s more, not hooked back.’

‘Now tell me what happened after you saw your husband.’

She looked at the floor again and mumbled something.

‘Please speak up, Mistress,’ said Aglionby.

‘I said, I fainted, your honour. Then I couldna think what to do, so I went downstairs again and I sent my little girl Mary to fetch…to fetch my friend, Mr Andrew Nixon.’

Her brow was wrinkled now. ‘When he came, what did he look like?’ Carey asked.

‘Oh, he was not well,’ said Mrs Atkinson. ‘He’d been in a fight, and lost it by the looks of him, and his right hand was in a sling and at first he said he didna want to meet my husband because he was angry.’

‘Quite so,’ said Carey hurriedly. ‘What did you decide to do?’